http://www.flickr.com/photos/33069042@N07/3085824614/
Although Israel’s siege of Gaza had eased under a five-month truce, on Nov. 4th Israel re-instated a severe blockade, putting hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who depend on humanitarian aid at risk of starvation. Not even UN agencies have been allowed through, despite entreaties from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon; Israel has also barred European Union diplomats and foreign journalists from Gaza, over the objections of Reuters, the BBC, the Associated Press, and CNN.
http://1158munich.blogspot.com/2008/11/israel-continues-starvation-of-gazans.html
So at noon on Thurs., on the one month anniversary of the renewal of the siege, dozens of activists gathered on the sidewalk on the main Los Angeles thoroughfare, Wilshire Blvd., to protest the siege and the ongoing Israeli Occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htLuBEIGQvI
The rally was organized by ANSWER-LA and Al-Awda (which means "Return" and advocates for a Right of Return for all Palestinian refugees), working closely with local groups such as the International Action Center. The protest lasted two and a half hours outside the Israeli Consulate.
Some of the participants came from outside of L.A. to participate, such as Richard Herman, a member of the Cousins Club of Orange County, which he explained is made up of Palestinian Arabs, Israeli Gews, and "Gentiles like myself" working for peace in the Middle East. Herman says he has studied the Arab-Israeli conflict for 40 years, and since retirement, has made "justice for Palestinians [his] main hobby." He lived in the Middle East from 1968 to 1984 and is amazed that he did "not find much animosity towards Jews in Palestine," considering the injustices that have been going on. As an American, he is very concerned that: "The U.S. is party to the crimes of Israel. We support Israel militarily, monetarily, and diplomatically. I’m part of a regime that is supporting horrible crime."
Other protesters who drove up from Orange County included Chuck Anderson, a KPFK-Radio volunteer, who came "because I’m a great-grandfather and I want Palestine to be free" and brought five car-loads of people from Anaheim, and Reza Pour, with the Union of Progressive Iranians, who said "we are here in solidarity with the Palestinian people because their land is being stolen and occupied by Israelis with the help of the U.S." He added that "the majority of people in the Middle East have a common struggle to defeat all these reactionary governments and build a unity for the common interest of the people there", citing Syria and Egypt as examples of other oppressive governments in the region. Pour believed the task of those who seek justice in the Middle East is to "unite the many to defeat the few."
Carlos Hernandez, an organizer with ANSWER-LA (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), called the protest "particularly important because of the siege, but also because little victories are important: a 100-person demo in front of the Israeli consulate is a little victory in the longer struggle". One of the longer-term goals of that struggle, he said, is "to stop U.S. aid to Israel. Without that aid, they would not be able to continue the Occupation."
He also defined ANSWER’s objectives as "not just a struggle to free Palestine, but a struggle against U.S. Imperialism." Hernandez pointed out that "the U.S. uses Israel as a watchdog state against the Arab nations", especially Lebanon and Syria. "The U.S. uses Israel to bring down any kind of movement to help the needs of working people."
Hernandez also gave a brief speech to the assembly from the street corner:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TFf0nL_ebc
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33069042@N07/3085001817/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33069042@N07/3085841552/
One of the initiators of the Dec. 4th event, Mazen Almoukdad, said the organization he represents, Al-Awda, felt a street protest was "the least we could do to inform the public" that "the siege in Gaza has gone too long". He deplored the privations Palestinians are going through as a result of the siege: no electricity in cold weather, no suitable drinking water, and so on. He described their plight as "so serious right now". Al-Awda issued a press release in Nov., during the siege’s second week. The grassroots coalition’s release calls on the public to write to the media and to their congressional representatives, and to get involved in street demonstrations, to end the siege.
Almoukdad wants to see "this immoral, illegal occupation" end, but he believes "Americans are really busy right now worrying about the economy", and have also been overwhelmed by the recent election, "which cost 5 billion dollars while people are hungry all over the world."
On the opposite side of Wilshire, facing the Israeli Consulate, a smaller counter-demonstration of supporters of Israel's policies held up flags and signs.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/33069042@N07/3085860436/
Abi said he always comes out for events like these and believes "the Israeli government is doing everything it can." His view of a solution for the Middle East is: "When the Arabs love their children more than they hate us there’ll be peace." His female friend told him "that’s beautiful." Abi claimed "the Palestinian cause is a mask", since it brings in money for groups like Hamas from "rich sheiks"; though he simultaneously argued that "Palestinians have no support from other Arab states."
He didn’t want to talk much about Israel’s siege of Gaza, though he finally said he was "not in favor of any siege because a siege without purpose has no meaning". Abi was more intent on relaying that "Palestinians are the most educated Arabs in the region yet their schoolbooks teach them: ‘kill one Zionist plus five Americans, and how many do you get?’". A couple of his peers backed up his claim that Palestinians teach their children to add up to six with this example.
Allegations that Palestinian textbooks incite students to hate Israel have been made by those as high up as Israel’s former Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon. A main voice critical of content in those schoolbooks is the Center_for_Monitoring_the_Impact_of_Peace.
But according to a 2004 overview published by the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education Curriculum Development Center, the European Union, Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information (in a report for the U.S. Congress), and various studies by academics at George Washington University, Hebrew University, and University of Rostock do not find these allegations to be true of new Palestinian Authority textbooks.
Speaking of indoctrination, a "news" story on the Dec. 4th protest against the siege of Gaza is up on a site called Democast. Readers of that piece would be pretty clear that the theme of the pro-Israel counter-demonstration was opposition to terrorism, but they’d have to take the anonymous author’s word for it that the rally organized by ANSWER and Al-Awda called for a "phased-destruction of Israel", that it was "culturally-insensitive", and that it consisted of "an unholy alliance of Islamist and Far-Left groups," since the reporter provided not one photo or video of the main protest, no quotes from any of the protesters against the siege, and no information as to why the protest at the consulate was actually called, except for speculation by the counter-protesters.
Incidentally, one of the counter-demonstrators chosen by the reporter for the edited-down video called himself a Christian, urged the nuking of Iran, and claimed that "God says ‘take ‘em out’". (The author’s byline does not appear with the piece, but an interviewer on the counter-demo side of the street on Dec. 4th told me he was Scott Jenkins from Democast.)
Interestingly, the full page of reportage on Democast padded its visuals on the counter-demonstration with a photo of a bustling crowd of pro-Israel demonstrators which a reader would probably assume is from the Dec. 4th, 2008 counter-protest in L.A.. However, since both it and a borrowed photo of the late Daniel J. Kliman appeared on the San Francisco Voice for Israel site in late Nov. 2008, it is clear that the photo in Democast’s piece on the L.A. event is from a different protest altogether – one that took place, in fact, on July 13th, 2006.
Which explains why it doesn’t look anything like my photo of the 16 or so counter-demonstrators on Thurs.:
Another reason it doesn’t look anything like the counter-protest outside the Israeli Consulate in L.A. is that it was in San Francisco -- as this YouTube video of both the strong, vocal protest against Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon, and the pro-Israel counter-protest shows.
Perhaps Zombietime.com would not mind their photo being used to illustrate the Democast piece. Zombietime’s most recent – and anonymous – report at our time of publication was a photo essay on the Nov. 28th Iraq Veterans Against the War street action in San Francisco. It called IVAW members "anti-American" and alleged they were not really veterans, then claimed that the Iraq War is over.
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